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Some history books will tell you that its counterbalanced cars were named Alphonse and Gaston, after two absurdly courtly Frenchmen, characters in a comic strip.

Why did desperate passengers, struggling to breathe, have to wait interminably while Metro officials and firefighters tried to determine whether power had been cut to the third rail so that it was safe for firefighters to mount a rescue, a bumbling pas de deux worthy of Alphonse and Gaston?

Girardi, Brian Boyle and Ryan McDonagh stood in a tight triangle, playing Alphonse and Gaston with the puck.

Mr. Outcault's "Yellow Kid" and "Buster Brown," Mr. Opper's "Happy Hooligan" and "Alphonse and Gaston," Gene Carr's "Lady Bountiful," and Carl Schultze's "Foxy Grandpa" are types that have won friends throughout the breadth of the continent.

In 1901, William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal launched a cartoon featuring two overly polite friends named Alphonse and Gaston.